


The Cleanse

by waywardelle



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Coda 11x04, M/M, Season/Series 11
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-30
Updated: 2015-10-30
Packaged: 2018-04-28 21:15:15
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,364
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5105996
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/waywardelle/pseuds/waywardelle
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A sleepy misunderstanding guides Sam back to the brother he thought he lost years ago. Coda to 11x04, "Baby."</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Cleanse

**Author's Note:**

> I have a problem. I cannot stop writing codas. Can I, like, get a life and leave these two alone?  
> x-posted at pathossam.tumblr.com

It’s late when Sam wakes up. Or early, depending on who you ask. There’s an awful crick in his neck, and there is a bookpage glued to his cheek with drool. He’s not sure why he’s awake until he feels Dean’s fingers card through his hair again, and that settles him, makes him almost willing to fall asleep again right here.

“I don’t think so, Sammy,” Dean murmurs, tugging on the strands he has caught between his steady fingers. “We haven’t slept in a bed in days. C’mon.”

“No one’s stopping you,” Sam mutters mulishly, still too asleep to recognize how that could hurt his brother. How that would hurt him, if Dean gave him that response. He sits up as quickly as his slow body can manage, spinning to face his brother. “Dean--”

“No, you’re right,” Dean mumbles, quickly stuffing his hands in his pockets. “You’re right. I-- You’re right. Goodnight.”

Sam watches him go, trying to blink away the fuzz. They haven’t shared a bed (that wasn’t the Impala) in almost two years, ever since the Gadreel mess. He hasn’t stopped wanting to, but he has stopped thinking of his brother’s bed as also his. It’s been so long, he thought Dean was trying to send him to bed like a kid, not invite him back into theirs. Especially not after Sam slept with that girl-- the proudness in Dean’s eyes solidified in Sam’s mind that whatever had been between them all their lives was finally sealed shut. He’d been too tired to mourn that when they shuffled back into the bunker, but not tired enough to face another night without hearing Dean snore right next to him. He’d started some notes on Dean’s ‘ghoul-pire’ but fell asleep, apparently, anyway. 

When Sam knocks on Dean’s door, no one tells him to enter. 

Sam has been breaking down barriers of Dean’s without permission his entire life, so it hardly deters him. He shuffles in quietly, and immediately, he knows something is wrong. He’s not sure what, but it’s giving him such anxiety, he wants to draw his weapon. Then, he hears a wet gasp of air, and knows. 

Dean is hunched over the bed, sobbing. 

“D-Dean?” Sam stammers, heart in his throat. He tries to remember the last time he’s seen Dean cry (it’s been years), can’t, and skitters to a stop on his knees in front of his brother. 

Dean’s face is buried in his hands, his whole body heaving with these heart-rending chokes and gasps. His hands and fingers are soaked. He has to know Sam is here, but he can’t seem to reel it in. Like a dam has burst. Or his heart. 

“Dean,” he tries again, big hands on his brother’s thighs. Dean is leaning over the side of the bed, elbows on his knees, head in hands, and he’s nearly wheezing. Sam is trying not to panic, but the way his own breathing is get all choppy tells him he’s not succeeding. “What’s the matter? God, Dean, it’s okay, whatever it is. I promise.”

“Not,” Dean finally says, like he’s forcing a sound around a thousand tons of pressure in his throat. “Not okay.”

Sam’s hands are gentle, tender as they grasp Dean’s forearms to pull his hands away from his face. He looks terrible, exhausted, red-faced, swollen. But he is still the most beautiful thing in this world and any other, and Sam has seen a lot of beautiful things. Sam has seen Heaven’s garden, a spark of triumph in Lucifer’s eye that was reflected in his own. He has seen a woman come for him, and he has seen his father’s proud smile. He’s seen the long stretch of the Badlands and the lush curve of the Appalachians, and he has seen recognition in his mother’s young eyes. But nothing, nothing in this world will ever touch the beauty, the sanctity of his brother. Nothing else has ever stood a chance in Sam’s eyes. 

“I can make it okay,” Sam insists, confident in that. He doesn’t pretend to understand why, but he knows by now that he is the soothing balm against the harsh, beating sun of Dean’s life. “Tell me.”

Dean shakes his head, stubborn like a dog with a bone, tears still silently pouring down his cheeks. He isn’t actively crying anymore, but he isn’t exactly trying to stop. Sam digs in his pocket for the handkerchief he keeps in there to wipe the dust away, keep it from building up on the books. It’s clean, thankfully, and he blots it along Dean’s tired face. His eyes, bleary and swollen as they are, have not once left Sam’s face. Sam is not doing anything nearly interesting enough for that kind of attention. 

“Tell me,” Sam repeats, and his fingers have suddenly joined in with the handkerchief at wiping away tears. His brother’s face is hot to the touch, and he gets the ridiculous urge to press kisses against the tender, puffy skin around his eyes. But he can’t. They don’t do that anymore. 

“F-feels like,” Dean starts, swallowing. His throat clicks, dry, and Sam reaches for the crystal glass of whiskey on Dean’s table, takes a swig, then settles it into Dean’s shaking hands. He wishes it was water, but he knows his brother better than that. “You really wanted that divorce after all, huh.” Dean tries to smile, but it makes the tears start streaming from his eyes again, and pretty soon, the expression crumbles back into despair.

 _“What?”_ Sam asks, certain they’ve never discussed anything close to divorce (or marriage, for that matter). He stuffs his handkerchief back in his pocket, then reattaches his hands around his brother's thick forearms. “You’re _scaring_ me, Dean.”

“S’okay, Sammy,” Dean mumbles around a thick tongue, fingers suddenly on Sam’s face. So gentle, trying to soothe him, tracing against the lines around Sam’s eyes that weren’t there when this first started between them, so many lifetimes ago. Dean pushes the tip of his finger against the exact spot his dimple forms when he smiles, but Sam’s never felt less like smiling. “Just-- just a shock. But I, you know, I.” 

Sam waits for the end of that sentence, but it doesn’t come. “You what, Dean?”

“I’m never gonna get over you,” Dean says suddenly, quickly, like maybe Sam won’t hear all the words if he says them fast enough. “Not ever. I thought. I thought you were the, the love of my,” and he trails off again, sliding Sam’s hair behind his ears, so soft compared to the gasps still ripping themselves out of Dean’s chest.

Sam’s brain is trying to process all this information. Dean is in here crying over him? Because of his half-asleep answer over where he wanted to bed down? There has to be more to the story. And he’s the-- the, “The love of your life?” Sam finishes, hardly able to believe Dean even came close to saying those words. 

“Yeah,” Dean breathes. “I don’t know how to get over you, Sam. Maybe I. Maybe it would be better if I, if I just left.”

In all of Sam’s years, Dean leaving him has never crossed his mind. Sure, Dean has temporarily run away to do stupid things he was too ashamed to let Sam watch, but Sam never doubted he was coming back. Leaving is Sam’s move, his out clause, his escape hatch. 

“No,” Sam tells him, feeling like he’s about to cry himself. “Leaving isn’t an option for either of us. Not anymore.”

“I can’t watch it,” Dean says. Sam suddenly realizes they’ve been having this entire conversation in the dark. He’s used to being able to rely on Dean’s eyes, his body language for answers, but somehow Sam knows that Dean would never be able to have this conversation with the light on. “Can’t watch you, just,” he shakes his hand in a weird gesture, but Sam thinks he gets it.

“Is this about Piper?” he asks carefully, squeezing his hands around Dean’s forearms. He realizes he never took his grip away, only moved to accommodate Dean putting his arms down.

“Piper,” Dean spits back, and yeah, Sam’s got him. 

“You jealous?” he teases, and he instantly knows it was the wrong move. Dean stiffens and shoves Sam’s hands away from him.

“Am I-- Am I jealous?” He’s not crying anymore, but Sam isn’t sure that yelling is a step up.

“I’m not gonna feel bad about that, Dean,” Sam snaps, feeling his temper rise with the pitch of Dean’s voice. “I hate when you do this. I always feel like we’re playing a game that only you know the rules too!”

“I don’t,” Dean starts, but looks a lot like Sam just decked him. “I didn’t,” he begins again, but goes silent. 

Sam calms down in a breath. Yelling is not helping anyone, and he’s in here to make his brother feel better, not worse. “We haven’t been,” he trips around the word together, “in years, Dean. I didn’t know, I wouldn’t have,” and there Sam goes, feeling guilty anyway. “You seemed so proud.” That’s what he’s stuck on, the thing that closed their book in his mind forever, not even three days ago. 

“Yeah,” Dean says, sniffling. The tears have finally stopped, but Dean still looks miserable. “I was. I am, Sam. You were so,” Dean’s expression cracks, and he almost smiles, “so funny, all pearl-clutching embarrassed over banging a girl in the back of Baby. Like she hasn’t seen more ass than a toilet seat.”

“Shut up,” Sam mumbles. His knees are killing him, and he thinks the worst part of it is over. He goes to stand, but Dean misreads him. His eyes go wide, terrified, and Sam is soothing him down into the bed before he even knows what he’s doing. 

When he comes back to himself, he’s hovering over Dean, shushing him, running his fingers all over his brother’s tender face. Dean is staring up at him like he isn’t quite sure he’s ever seen him before. 

“Sam,” he gasps, grabbing for purchase along Sam’s body. His hands mold against Sam’s hips, like an old pair of gloves, and Sam shivers. It’s like a key fitting into a lock, and cracking open what’s inside. 

He backs away when he realizes they’re not done talking. Dean has always gone to his head quicker than oxygen, always the first sense Sam is using. Sam has ignored logic and facts to keep this because it is that important to him, and he’s not sure how they lost it along the way. 

“Look,” Sam says, watching Dean rise to a sitting position again. “You’re the one who said we were batting zero in domestic life, Dean.”

“I meant with other people,” Dean argues. “Jesus, Sammy. I was arguing for _us._ ”

“What do you think _I_ meant?” Sam demands, lurching forward to grab his brother’s biceps. He would never, ever hit Dean out of anger, but the urge to shake him sometimes is overwhelming. “Settling down with someone who knows the life? Not marriage, but, come on, Dean!”

“You had just slept with some chick!”

“Piper,” Sam grates out. He hates when Dean does this. He had a really great night with her, and he won’t listen to Dean make it sound like it was nothing. It’s not Sam’s fault that everything seems like nothing when compared to Dean, but it was still special. He doesn’t regret it even a little bit, even if he does feel guilty for the inadvertent reaction. 

“Piper,” Dean growls back. “What-the-fuck-ever. You told me you asked for her number!” 

That catches Sam, and he does the strangest thing. He smiles. Dean’s face had to have been the funniest thing he'd ever seen, watching him try to process that, and the memory overtakes him. It bothered Dean more than Sam had ever intended it to, even if he was, “Trying to make you jealous.”

Dean’s tired, bloodshot eyes nearly bug out of his head. He sputters. “Sam! We’re--I’m almost forty years old, okay? The huge majority of those years have been dedicated to you. Why would you need to make me jealous, when you could have me whenever you wanted?”

And it’s just like Dean, who says he hates feelings, to lay Sam out like that. Dean may hate his feelings, but that doesn’t mean he doesn’t make them completely and utterly clear to Sam, and usually in the most heart-wrenching way possible. Sam looks back and can’t think of a single reason why he assumed Dean stopped wanting him, why he didn’t remember all the millions of times Dean promised, swore he would never stop loving Sam, stop wanting him, ever. No matter what. 

Dean has pulled the rug out from under him so many times, Sam stopped feeling like Dean was a sturdy place to stand. But Sam forgot the bigger picture for those small details, that everything Dean has ever done, at least in Dean’s own mind, has been in the name of his love for Sam. 

“Dean,” Sam whispers, and he feels his own tears try to start. “God, Dean, I forgot. I’m sorry, I’m so sorry.”

“Hush, Sammy,” Dean murmurs, in his comfort zone again. He scoops Sam up like he used to when Sam could actually be lifted by Dean grabbing him under the arms, but Sam goes anyway because he wants to so, so badly. 

Once Sam gets one whiff of a molecule of Dean’s air, he’s desperate. His fingers ball into Dean’s t-shirt, and he buries his nose into Dean’s neck, chest. He can’t sit still or stop touching, so much of Dean that hasn’t gotten Sam’s attention in so long. 

“I will always love you,” Dean whispers into Sam’s hair, as Sam clenches his eyes shut around the hot ache behind his eyes. “I will never, ever stop. Sam, you didn’t forget. I stopped telling you. There’s a difference.”

That feels right to Sam, and something deep inside him unravels. His next full breath feels like the first one in two years.

“I stopped telling you, too,” Sam insists, pressing a shaky kiss against Dean’s neck. 

Dean draws him back with a hand in his hair, and it makes Sam want to tug against it. But he won’t, he’ll be good. For now. 

“You will never know how sorry I am for the last two years,” Dean tells him, shaking the hand in Sam's hair a little for emphasis. “Ever. I don’t have the words, but I know I will spend the rest of my life trying to find them.”

“Dean,” Sam murmurs, trying to get at him, but Dean won’t let him go yet. 

“But I can’t,” Dean starts, opening and closing his mouth like he’s tasting the flavor of his words before he feeds them to Sam. “I won’t live like a martyr anymore, Sam. I want a clean slate. For all of it. The Mark, Kevin, the soulless shit, the Apocalypse. The demon blood, Sam. Ruby. All of that. If you can wipe my sins clean, I can wipe yours.”

That is all Sam has ever wanted, ever tried to ask of his brother. He can hardly believe that Dean is saying all this, but something about the way Dean cried earlier, like he was flayed and raw and desperate makes sense to him. The simplicity of it is Dean probably thought that road trip was part of the ongoing love letter he's been writing to Sam all his life, but Sam went and sent a postcard to another girl, instead. He gets it. 

“I can do that,” Sam promises. “But you’re already forgiven for all those things anyway.”

Dean slumps a little, finally letting go of Sam’s hair. Sam gets back at him, nose curving around Dean’s cheek. He can taste Dean this close, and his mouth waters with it. “You are, too, you know. I promise I, I swear I will stop using them as ammo.”

“Dean,” Sam whines again, a little frustrated with himself for not being able to say much more than his brother’s name. It feels like he’s been asking Dean a question each time, and Dean has yet to answer him.

“Okay, Sammy,” Dean tells him, and finally answers. 

Sam lunges for his mouth the same time Dean tips his head up. Sam goes crazy for it, the feel of his brother’s tired, shaking lips pressing against his, mashing Sam's against his teeth. Sam catches Dean’s bottom lip and sucks on it, and it makes a sharp sound that have them both panting into each other’s mouths. Dean’s t-shirt is ripped over his head in a flutter of arms, and Sam’s red plaid button-up goes flying with it. 

Sam presses Dean down into the bed, exhausted but knowing he won’t sleep until they finish this. He can’t leave Dean’s mouth alone, tonguing along the chapped ridges on his bottom lip as he works their belts between his long fingers. Their buttons pop and they spill out, and just their cloth-covered erections scraping harshly together is enough to have Sam’s spine melting out of his dick with one startled cry. 

“Did you just come,” Dean pants, and Sam can’t believe it, but yes, so worked up and denied for so long, and he can’t even blame it on the lack of a sex life, it’s just Dean, his smell and feel and everything Sam has ever loved and all the world inside one person. “You did, oh god, look at you.”

Sam’s hips are still screwing Dean down into the bed, riding it out, his brother’s hands bruising a hold into his hipbones. “Oh, god,” Sam chokes out, dropping to his elbows, covering Dean with the entire of expanse of his body. “Come on,” he demands, digging his knees into the mattress, putting all his weight behind his pounding hips. 

Dean shouts, head going back, long pale neck bared for Sam’s mouth. He sucks kisses all down it, wanting to see himself reflected on Dean’s skin in the morning. Wanting that more than anything, the reminder of the promise sealed between them. Sam feels Dean’s briefs dampening against his, and he slows his hips a little, soothing Dean through it. It’s rare that Sam is on top; they both prefer it the other way. But something about tonight, Dean needed Sam’s reassurance, the heavy weight of all his love pressed against him. Sam was happy to give it.

They strip the rest of the way, and then climb under Dean’s covers. It occurs to Sam that if he had understood Dean when he had first woken up, yes, he would have followed his brother. He would have slept in here, happily, but that knot he’s carried with him since that night in the rain and streetlights, when he told Dean to go, just go, would still be there. He’s sorry Dean had to get so upset, but he won’t ever be sorry about this night. 

Sam finds himself draped against Dean’s chest, his breath making Dean’s nipple go hard. He licks out at it, and Dean’s hips jump. He glares at Sam, self-righteous big brother, and it makes Sam smile in that way he hasn’t been able to stop since Dean suggested the road trip.

“Dean,” Sam mumbles against Dean’s skin when he can feel his brother’s breathing slow, start to slide into sleep. 

“Hmm, Sammy,” Dean whispers back, fingers trailing in that perfect way Sam has missed so much he didn’t even know how to begin expressing his need for it to come back. He gets lost in it for a minute, burrowing closer into his brother. They can’t really get any closer, but that doesn’t stop Sam from trying, nor does it stop Dean from tightening his arm around Sam’s waist. 

“For the record,” he murmurs, letting his lips stay soft so they trail over Dean’s skin, sealing the words forever, “I don’t want a divorce.”

He feels more than hears Dean’s chuckle. “I wouldn’a granted you one anyways,” Dean tells him sleepily, but no less confidently. 

Sam smiles, finally at peace.

**Author's Note:**

> I swear, guys. This was supposed to be two paragraphs. I just couldn't get the image of Dean crying out of my mind. Your kudos and comments (I respond to everyone because I'm so obsessed with you guys) mean the world to me. You don't even know. xo


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